1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus, and more particularly, to an image pickup apparatus having a function of taking a two-dimensional (2D) video and a three-dimensional (3D) video.
2. Description of the Related Art
Some television and movie contents of recent years are provided in a 3D format, and an environment that allows general users easy viewing of 3D pictures is on the way. In conjunction with this, image pickup apparatus manufacturers have proposed cameras capable of taking a 3D picture.
The common conventional method of taking a 3D picture is to photograph the same subject from different view points at the same time and obtain and generate a 3D picture from the amount of parallax between the view points. However, because a 3D picture is seen through a process in which the human brain recognizes a picture formed from parallax images as a three-dimensional image, images seen with eyes that are not adjusted properly for the process in which the human perceives a three-dimensional image may give the viewer a sense of strangeness. It has therefore been proposed as in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-187385 that, to take a 3D picture with an image pickup apparatus capable of handling 3D pictures, the camera control method (the cycle of exposure control in the case of Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-187385) is changed from that of 2D imaging in a manner that prevents the viewer viewing the 3D picture from feeling a sense of strangeness.
However, there are various other conditions that give a viewer of a 3D picture a sense of strangeness. Consumer cameras, in particular, which are used to take a 3D picture by general camera users instead of professionals, should have an automatic camera control function for adjusting the camera settings in advance to suit imaging conditions and a function of processing 3D picture data that is to be recorded so that a 3D picture taken may be an appropriate picture that does not give the viewer a sense of strangeness during viewing.